Originally Posted by
sincos
That's very informative, thank you. Though I confess, I didn't understand much of it. Eg, I thought soaps are fatty acid salts, but that would make them amphoteric. Great for solubilizing grease, but wouldn't that attract water? Also, I don't understand how the metal is important (not that I ever paid much attention to them, I thought they were just spectator ions for charge balance). I foresee a deep dive into the chemistry of grease in the not too distant future ...
This is a huge subject, one in which I've become interested because I'm a born skeptic ... I wanted to drill down (if you'll forgive the almost-pun) into the back story of oils and greases.
I read so much in marketing waffle that just didn't seem to add up, so gave myself a crash course in the chemistry of oils and greases (thank God for Foundation Chemistry on my degree course).
Here's quite a good overview article, to get you started, I'll warn you though, as soon as you start following the links, it gets to be pretty deep water, pretty quickly:
https://knowledge.ulprospector.com/8...ner-structure/